This has worked for plenty of people in this thread so I suggest you read it completely, however be aware that your millage may vary, perhaps you will gain something perhaps not, but you will never lose

Everybody has experienced how FPS are going down the drain recently with TF2, however I believe I've found one of the sources (I'm pretty sure there many others) and found a way to fix it, so enough with the rambling I'm going straight to the point:

The folder:

Code:

C:\Program Files\Steam\appcache\stats

Contains a file called:

Code:

UserGameStats_####_#### (# = some numbers)

This file keeps records of god knows what about TF2, and it gets updated EXTREMELY frequently while playing.

The problem is that, most of us run high quality Anti-virus programs and they tend to scan all files that get updated in the system, and a lot of them tend to do so the instant it happens, clogging up the processor and making our FPSs die.

Apparently, having a multicore processor and fast hard drives (or a RAID 0 config) makes this even worse.

FPS: Average around 60 fps, may go down to 30 during heavy circlejerking.
Resolution: 1920x1080
Everything maxed.

EDIT: Never experienced a notable decrease in FPS during any updates.

lol rly?
i have a 3.4 phenom II quad (oc'd to 3.75) and a 4870x2 radeon, so my system is only somewhat better than yours, yet i get around 350 fps normally with everything maxed (HDR, everything) and it never goes below 80, not even on 32insta 2fort.

Hey, I've got an old Pentium 4 (3ghz) with 2 gigs of ram and a Radeon 9600 that I adopted when my work was about to throw it in the trash. About how well did your machine perform? (Playable, but on what settings).

I ask because work was required to nuke the hard drive before they trashed it and I'd have to throw $50 bucks into it if I wanted it back up and running. It'd be cool if I could throw an extra copy of TF2 on here so I could have people over to play, but if it'll suck really badly then I'll probably just forget it and try to make it into a DVR or something.